Book Review: Never Split the Difference
Voss, Christopher. Never split the difference : negotiating as if your life depended on it. HarperBusiness, 2016.
Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It (2016) by Chris Voss with Tahl Raz explores a wealth of negotiating techniques presented in a framework of topical chapters that are meant to build on and to inform one another.
Throughout the book, Voss shares stories about his work as an FBI negotiator, beginning each chapter with a dramatic kidnapping or hostage situation. These anecdotes make the book hard to put down. The reader’s attention is kidnapped as well until the situation is resolved – and each technique explained.
An over-arching theme of the book is that creating adversarial relationships, quid pro quo bargaining, and compromise – what could be considered aspects of traditional negotiation – aren’t the best techniques or outcomes. Voss instead advocates listening actively, creating empathy, becoming comfortable with “no,” and humanizing your counterpart as just some of the tools of successful negotiators.
Voss teases out each technique, explaining it, showing how it is used in the process and providing tips, tricks, and easily memorized phrases to use. He also points out that negotiation is not a 1-2-3 process but a fluid dynamic where the skilled negotiator uses these tools interchangeably, repeatedly, and with emotional insight to move toward resolution.
The book can be challenging as Voss pushes his reader to understand that negotiation will at times be an uncomfortable and self-conscious process. For example, mirroring – an active listening technique that involves repeating what your counterpart is saying – can seem transparently manipulative, but can also be an effective way to build empathy.
Voss’s success in engaging his reader does falter, especially when he moves away from the life and death FBI negotiations to more mundane negotiations where one party can simply walk away from a deal. Further, his writing is sometimes gratingly self-promoting, as he repeatedly reminds his reader of his prestigious titles and positions. The experiences he relates are already more than sufficient to cement his reputation.
If the reader chooses to set aside these weaknesses, they can enjoy Never Split the Difference, as it delivers the excitement of a thriller with its hostage negotiation stories and presents the practical techniques that made these negotiations successful.
Also available as an eBook or audiobook on OverDrive and on Notable Business Books Kindles.
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